Sunday, September 3, 2006

The water display at the National Museum of the American Indian (on the Mall in Washington, DC). I visited here with Jeanne and Frank and Mary.


A splendid building with ochre stone facing and these water falls and pools on the mall side.

On the street side are gardens of native corn, tobacco and melons. Did I see any potatoes? The museum does feature native peoples of both North and South America. And the peoples of Peru and Bolivia survived any food crisis because of their rich varieties of potato.

Frank pointed out the use of the word "contact" in some of the Museum descriptive displays. Making "contact" describes for the native peoples what the Europeans thought of as the "discovery" of the Americas.